Dialogue Description:

The political landscape is shifting quickly now, and we want our September dialogue to reflect and hold space for this movement. From the recent white supremacist mobilizations to climate injustice to DACA, this is a brutal time, an extension of the ongoing violence targeting marginalized communities and the earth.
Amidst all these shifting forces, how do we stay centered and clear in our long term vision? How do we get precise with our actions, and stay connected? What pulls us away from trust and interdependence, and how do we grow our skills to move towards dignity for ourselves and our movements? How do we work with and understand patterns of fear, numbness or hopelessness? Some of us feel the tug of our privilege, how perhaps recent actions do not directly target us – how tothen return again and again to our stakes in work for collective liberation?
In this dialogue, we will offer space for conversation and reflection. We will move through some embodied practices to explore hopelessness and hope using tools from Theatre of the Oppressed. Not sure about all that? Feel free to email us with questions.
Suggested readings:

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

What brings you here?
– How to stay present? How do we show up and when? Tactics and strategy.
– How to manage doing challenging and draining paid work and still be doing the unpaid change
work that I feel like I need to do and that feeds me? I often feel too exhausted for it?
– Want to meet people in this work and build community. Really love small discussions.
– Looking for ways to plug into work here in the bay. Felt paralysis around how to engage.
Moments of momentum related to upsurges in movement work. Have been looking for spaces for
reflection alongside action.
– Intense exhaustion thru paid work makes it hard to show up. Being in an area part of the buffer
zone, the constant re grounding in political education is crucial.
– How to come together to have these conversations with other people. Nice to create intentional
time.
– Hate the binary that I force myself to be in around the good things and the bad things that I do.
Holding complexity – I don’t know how to big enough to hold the opposition and complexity all at
once all the time forever. Nonprofit work – figuring out how to move money. Am I crazy that I
think I could be part of making change when it is so massive? Feeling confused about all of that
right now.
– Relating to the subject area of WNC dialgoues – especially around white fragility. How to be
intentional given the horrors of the day. Foundation for paid work and daily life. How to be more
productive and contribute to radical movements.
– How to be more precise and centered through constant bombardment- Jewish feelings in this
moment.
– Coming to be in community – how do we choose what we do? How do I recognize that I can’t do
everything? Social media bombardment. Sense of guilt or obligation. How to be accepting of not
being at every single thing. The Jewish thing. I go to the place of I am white, I can walk the
streets, I don’t have a right to have those feelings. How to have those feelings and not prioritize
those.
– Have been missing WNC because of another org; other org has been so frustrating. The content
that was sent out was really resonant. Hard to deal with the ridiculous internal pettiness that I’ve
seen. It’s just hard.
Interlude: Theatre of the Oppressed and Grounding Tools
– A lot of the overwhelm is around sense of holding the world on my shoulers. Immense
responsibility. Tied to ego, thinking I’m going to be the one to change the world. Not productive
for me or other people. Letting myself off the hook a bit, to be as involved as I can be. Trying to
be joyful right now. It is revolutionary in this time. Sometimes it is not possible.
– How to hold years of contradictions, especially within people. My response is a lot of retraction
and isolation from people who are not engaging in the ways I am want and expect to. I know in
my heart that building relationships is central, and that it is really hard. Within my intellectual
lens, there is so much judgment and critique of myself that creates so much isolation.
– What is keeping us from trust and interdependence? How do we hold that we are in constant
contradictions? How do we hold our complicity. How does accountability come into that. The
level of critique and perfection from each other and ourselves, and it leads to fear and division
because I find myself afraid to take risks or put things out there because I don’t know around what
corner I’m going to get called out for it. Then, I come into conversations to try to pull people, and
they respond with critiques, and it feels really tiring. How do we trust in the interdependence? In
the somatic thing, is that is too much – and that is alone. How do I stay connected? That we need
each other?
– Most of the social justice work that I am a part of is mainly younger people (late twenties).
Because I have been involved only for a couple of years in a similar way. My friendships outside
of my social justice work are still important to me, and there is a massive gap. And there is a gap

in my relationships within social justice work. The people in movement work are not the ones I
call when I feel depressed or when I move. I don’t have interdependence with the people I do the
work with and that feels hard. Feels complicated about being in white organizing spaces, knowing
that it has to be done – what’s behind feeling like I should be in multi-racial spaces. Also should I
age out? Feeling like I don’t know where to put that energy? I am feeling unsafe in the safe space
of white people organizing with white people.
– I feel in a lot of ways very isolated. I volunteer and show up there every week. I don’t feel like I
have community. I have a social justice task – that I checked in with APTP to confirm it is a good
idea. I don’t know how to ask for help from all the white people out there doing social justice work
so I feel stuck.
– Feeling Jewish grief intensely. Also struggling with holding contrasts between holding that I get
all the safety of whiteness and thinking about my Jewish grandfather who died last year. Thinking
about ancestors and historical trauma and the legacy of fear. In my daily work, I work with kids in
foster care, who are mostly youth of color who have never been safe in their lives. Hard to go
home knowing I have a home to go to. How to hold all of that at once? It is really hard. I end of
checking out. I can’t get through the day otherwise. How do I motivate myself to go to a meeting
after work? How do I engage with other people? That gets in the way of organizing and
relationships, and it’s not what I need.
– It’s hard when just staying present with reality requires so much of my energy. How to not tune it
out. I feel exhausted by it.
– Aside from organizational drama, it has been to manage my energy. I want to say yes to things,
and I realize I can’t do everything, and I still find myself totally strung out. I don’t know what to
do. I feel like I do a good job setting boundaries – not answering emails this weekend. Still, people
make requests, and I don’t want to say no to them. I know that is not good for me as an individual,
and it is also not meaningful in the end. I don’t know how to get better at it. Intellectually, I am
doing the things I am supposed to do and saying no.
– Still yearning for someone to tell me what to do. That there is some other right place, or different
thing I should be doing.
– Doubt that I have any skills that are valuable. I don’t know the places – I don’t believe I am
allowed to and have the skills and capacity to show up in those places.
– I get this very flippant attitude – like ah! Got a text about what Trump did via NYT and swiped it
away like ‘ugh this person keeps texting me’. Felt like it was impeding my day. How much of that
is attached to really deep intergenerational trauma and fear, help with immense safety. Feeling
vacant, not around for the feeling and the sadness. I am really checked out but my body is still
talking. How much does it have to do with being Jewish?
– Almost raised to be disassociated a lot of the time, numbing and disconnected. I think about a fair
amount in terms of the cultural norms of my parents. How that was so planned for a white kid to
not feel or be connected. I was not taught to understand my own race at all, to acknowledge it, and
that is intentional. I’m always having to figure these things out, sometimes feels like on my own. I
work at a fairly conservative health system for San Mateo County. Talking about whiteness at all,
white fragility is off the charts there. In order to manage that, or feel like I am doing something,
especially working with white women bosses to unhinge their rigidness around race and language,
trying to stay in my own place of actual growth and accountability, and also meet them where
they’re at. They are in a fucked up place. They are barely able to talk about race at all. To meet
them where they’re at, it is like a joke in the grand scheme of things. How does this help DACA?
Relate to the theme of being numb. Half midwestern and half WASP. The racism is different from
both sides.
– I’m been frustrated with the DSA, have been working with it since the election. Starting to see
really troubling patterns in the way that we are replicating bureaucratic structures that have been
harmful for a long time, and the way that those systems have been used to stop important work by
elected leadership. It feels like this primarily white group working on healthcare, only want to
focus on that. They are not open to working with other campaigns. Said they couldn’t partner with
an educational org, because felt like it would be undemocratic to make that decision without
agreeing with their whole vision of how to achieve change. On paper, the reasoning was ok, but to
have conversations with a friend with an abolition caucus – feels so divisive internally. Said
mutual aid is not the way to organize – and it was so frustrating to hear. I don’t want to give up,
this is probably where I need to be, and it is so exhausting. I just feel like I am walking on

eggshells. How to be empathetic and open, and to assume the best of people. We are not helpless,
they often frame themselves as helpless.
– Sums up our movement and every org. Very colonized imaginations around what is possible.
Don’t know how to do anything different. Keep replicating the things we are trying to tear down.
Then pile disposability on top of that. When do you walk away? And then there’s the binary of
right and wrong?
– Our enemy has a very singular long game by any means necessary. Doesn’t care about the process
that gets them there. We care so much about how we get there that we are just stumbling. Hard to
feel what progress looks like because we care about the how as much as the what. When do you
compromise on the vision? What’s too much compromise? When is it more important to build
together?
– Then you start thinking about autonomy and how to build outside of this system?
– How to systematize process in a different way? If the zapatistas were to name their end goal, it is
all about process.
– Who are we talking about when we say ‘we’ and the ‘enemy’? I don’t believe that there is one side
that is streamlined in their goal to accumulate wealth. I don’t think I am not trying to accumulate
wealth. What would it really mean for me to actively divest from systems of wealth accumulation?
There are parts that I can do and parts that are the science fiction work?
– Soothing suck of privilege – oh it does feel good to have things.
– This is a different kind of dialogue that I have ever participated in. I am having an important time.
Usually, it is more about readings, speaking more directly to something to get to something. Now
we are having group therapy styling. Maybe there are times where we have more direct work with
readings.
– How many times has the moment changed since two months ago when we first come up with this
dialogue topics.
– Constant reacting to what is happening now: There are a lot of people who are upset now related
to Trump. Don’t you understand that those things predate Trump and will continue to happen after
him. He is no the problem, but an extension of broader systems. POC are not shocked, especially
compared to white people. It troubles me that if he gets impeached, people will go back to their
couches. I want to be part of people understanding that they can’t go back to their couches. How
do we support people in staying and participating?
– I think it keeps us disconnected from history. It is an individualist mentality to separate Trump
from others.
– The phrase – this not our America – yes the constitution was written for rich white men. Having
come into a country with people who have already been here it is a bunch of BS.
– In general, I have trouble asking for help and I don’t have a very big network. Oakland residents
might be aware that there was a big reduction in the police budget that failed. The police
continually over spend their budget. How do I get people to contact their city counsel people to get
the police to follow their budget. Has been consulting with APTP to make sure it is accountable.
– The percentage of the budget is 43% and it doesn’t include lawsuits and what they will overspend.
– I asked a rep from APTP to make sure it was a good idea, and the rep gave me the go ahead to do
it. My single voice is not enough.
– It is so frustrating to hear the thoughtful public comment for hours, and then hear specific council
member dismiss it based on their ideas of what their constituents have said. That is what is so hard
about pulling in electoral politics? Should I waste my time with those people?
– If their phones rang off the wall, they would respond.
– There is a rhetoric in our society that police should keep people safe. Felt the same way at the
SUS presentation at City Counsel. I don’t think it is about logic and constituents, it is about what is
happening behind doors. Police have to protect businesses and rich people.
– How to work with electoral politics? It feels hard to address. Yes, I will call and also I don’t know
that it is about logic and constituents.
– Important to hear from us. We make it easy when they don’t. At least we make it a little harder.
– How are we showing up? What makes sense? What matters?
– Contradictions: the system is breathing and growing. The system is working hard to incorporate
and build up that system. All of the pieces are important and none are important.
– How do we keep those as part of a strategy and a vision?

– How do we built and connect each other through the actions and tasks that we’re doing?
– What keeps us from trust and interdependence?
– Seeing people who I feel should know better be inflexible about the way they approach things. I
don’t know if it is a mistake? Is it a mistake to not trust them, because I want to believe that they
show up because they mean well and want to make change? I don’t want them to be someone with
a different agenda? Don’t want to be complicit by choosing to trust people?
– When I think about not trusting them in their humanity or in their intellectual action? I don’t trust
that my parents are doing the work to investigate their privilege, but trust their humanity and heart.
That investment feels more sustainable because it is also nourishing to my soul. If I don’t trust
their humanity, there is a problem, if I don’t trust their action, there is space to work with that.
– It is hard when you don’t know. I don’t know them well enough to make that call.
– When do you have time to get to know people when you are doing organizing and are trying to be
able to afford live? And maintain ongoing relationships, get enough sleep, ect? I don’t sit down
and have deep conversations because I don’t have time, and that’s what I need to connect with
people.
– This is very individual, are there ways and spaces within this work that support those kinds of
relationship building so that it is less reliant on individuals. Burden is on the individual rather than
institution.
– The way in which I felt urgency in the day to day from so many people has taken away from slow
moving process of where we are and who we are. It is really easy to intellectualize. Importance of
collective relationship building. WNC dialogues do a really good job. Relationships often get lots
in productivism. What brings me back when I do check out? Who are the people I call upon.
Those people are what brings me back. It is important in this moment of constant crisis that we
don’t lose that piece.
Check Out
– Thinking the most about how do I show up at work around this question about money? I deal
directly with money all the time. I really want to find a way to show up when we find out that one
of our donors is accumulating wealth from private prisons? There’s no change that will happen,
even in the next 10 years. I know I need to draw those connections still. How can that be enough?
How to create those direct connections? Right now, I am just learning, accumulating my tools to
know how to do it? It feels impossible that that would be enough. Day to day, it is really troubling.
Thinking about ways to support myself with that question looming.
– Went from feeling cool from looking at the water, from thinking about all the things I need to do.
Feel like I need to do more political work. Mind is boggled by urgency feeling, which feels
unexpected due to the nature of the time we’ve had. Has felt much more process oriented.
– Felt less and less grounded throughout the dialgoue, chaotic and scattered. Makes sense and is
reflective of the nature of this dialogue. Has felt like a different space than others. Struggled to
connect to deep emotion, and this is pushing me in different ways. Want to retract and check out.
Rather than being of asking each other for support, thinking about what we have to offer to each
other, so that people can follow up that way. Within conversations of isolation and overwhelm, it
is energizing to connect with people. Wants to offer space for connection and support.
– Feeling emotionally charged. Coming into a new space with people I have never met with a lot of
different energies. Energizing. Appreciate the end, felt good to connect thru discussion.
– Moved in and out of body and feelings. It is disorienting. Continuing to think about issues about
whiteness, and trying to do accountability within agency and home. It is a lot and I don’t want it to
be everything I do. Going into a spiral of not being enough and therefore being unloveable. Sense
of not doing enough. Feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by all the things that I am doing. It is an
impossible place to be.
– Grief, humanity. Colonized imagination. Strategy – how are we being strategic? But is that a
byproduct of war? Every bit of it feels like it has to be thrown away? Also to have this drive to do
something, where ever that comes from.
– Frustration with things that are simple actually being complicated. Practice and keep doing it.
There are millions of people and if everyone did a little something we could make a change.
– Access to creativity stifled thru lack of emotionality
– Feeling muddy. Probably tomorrow I will feel invigorated. There is a lot of ideas, things are so
complicated that it is muddy right now. Feel grateful for the space. Always looking for ways not

to burn out and live with more sustainability. Gentle with myself and always push toward growth.
– Still feeling anxious. Appreciating the space and time. Appreciating framing of offering instead of
asking. I want to offer more communal space through the DSA, with the hopes that conversations
like this could happen. Is that the right thing for me to be doing? Wanting to hold that space and
also offer more informational workshops to the chapter as well. Feeling like I don’t know
anything. Wanting to figure out how to show up, feeling chaotic.